


The Art of Remembering

by Alliterative_Albatross



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Emotionally Repressed Scrooge McDuck, Episode: s01e01 Woo-oo!, Gen, Grief, Parent Scrooge McDuck, dream walking, scrooge knows he's a little messed up in the head and that doesn't bother him as much as it should
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 03:46:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16318526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliterative_Albatross/pseuds/Alliterative_Albatross
Summary: It would be so much easier if he could just forget.





	The Art of Remembering

“Dewford!!”

Scrooge launches himself out of bed, eyes wide, wing outstretched.

But there is no little blue-clad duckling to rescue. He is in the mansion. The boys are in their rooms, sleeping.

Safe.

As they should be.

He heaves a tired sigh and leans forward, elbows on knees, eyes screwed shut against the images that continue to churn unsettlingly in his mind. His heart flutters in his chest, as if it had sprouted wings of its own, and tonight, he feels every bit of his eighty-seven years.

It’s been a long time since he’s had a dream like that, and he knows exactly what had brought it on.

 

* * *

 

_“Oh really? Which triplet am I?”_

_You’re Dewford Deuteronomy, he doesn’t say. You’re the middle child, the athlete, the adventurer, the handful, the one yearning for something bigger since you first turned your gaze to the horizon._

_You are your mother’s son._

_“It’s Blu-ey?” he answers instead, because he can’t say what he wants. Not with Donald watching._

_Not ever, he reminds himself firmly. Family is nothing but trouble._

_But Dewford, true to form, had found the real jewel of Atlantis and untrapped them all. Something in Scrooge’s heart had swelled to see Della’s boy that night, feathers still glistening from a shower, eyes the size of saucers as he told and retold the story of flooding the chamber of Atlantis to the brothers gathered round his knees._

_“Well curse me kilts,” Scrooge mutters, hovering at the edge of the room and surveying the scene._

_He had missed this._

 

* * *

 

He hadn’t expected the dreams to make their reappearance.

Oh, he’d often dreamed of Della in the months and years he’d spent searching for her. The dreams were always awful. No matter the situation, no matter how many details change, no matter how well Scrooge knows what is about to happen or how many times he'd had this exact same dream, he still cannot save her.

Adventures aren’t for ninnies, but despite that, good people get hurt in this life. Scrooge knows that he’d sent Della to her death on the Spear of Selene, and since then, he’s lost her over and over again, in countless unspeakable ways each sleepless night. 

He was always going to lose Della, one way or another. The universe just seemed hell-bent that he _know_ it.

After the dreams, things only got worse.

In the beginning, when the bin was still mostly full and Scrooge was still hardly sleeping, Della would come to him in those early mornings, during the pre-dawn hours that the ancient Gaelic Cailleach had believed the avian mind capable of walking in the realm of dreams. Of course, Scrooge didn’t believe all that hooey, but still, sometimes he'd see her out of the corner of his eye. Occasionally, they would even speak, and Della would reassure him that she was okay, that things were good, and that had always been enough for Scrooge. The knowledge that he was so troubled by his own guilt of losing Della that his uneasy mind fabricated a wraith of her to tell him what he wanted to hear - that she was safe and happy - well, he didn’t put up too much of a fight. The last several years or so, the dreams had tapered off, and with them, so had the the visions of a ghostly Della.

Truth be told, he’d been glad of it. There are only so many times a duck can be reminded of his greatest failures before he loses himself in them.

But good fortune can’t last forever, even for Scrooge McDuck, and this time, this time, the awful dream had been about Dewford.

Dewey.

Scrooge closes tired eyes and still sees it, a pale little duck in a light blue shirt. He presses his beak to the edge of a tank that is rapidly filling with water. His eyes are wide, wild. Bubbles escape his opened mouth, and he begins to falter, slowly sinking deeper and deeper while Scrooge watches paralyzed, powerless to stop it.

“Gah!” he says aloud, shaking his head as if to disperse the remnants of the dream. He stands, shrugging into his housecoat, and without stopping to think it through, pads barefooted down the corridor toward the boys’ rooms.

In the time it takes for his eyes to adjust to the dark, he can just barely make out the pile of ducklings heaped together in one bed. Scrooge’s bill twists into an almost-smile. _All of this great big mansion,_ he thinks to himself, _and still you three choose to share a bed._ Telling them apart is truly impossible now, as they are a tangle of limbs and feathers and blankets and heavy breathing. The sight of them sends something warm unfurling in the pit of Scrooge’s stomach.

Safe.

He leaves the boys' room as quietly as he’d come in, trotting back up the stairs to his master suite balcony. The night is unseasonably cold, and he pulls his housecoat tighter, briefly considers trekking back down to the kitchen for a cuppa and then decides against it. Instead, he sits with back to the stone walls, half leaning, half sitting on the railing.

 _Moon is bright tonight,_ he has time to think, and then, for the first time in years, she is behind him.

Funny that time seems to have changed her. This Della is older. Her hair is longer and her flight suit is patched, but it is her eyes that hit Scrooge like a punch to the solar plexus.

Gone is the spark of joy that had so defined his favorite niece. Gone is the humor, the vibrance. Della’s eyes are tired, dark with hopelessness and burdened with the knowledge of all she’s seen.

Scrooge schools his face, takes a step back. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks it strange that he would have pictured her like this. He dismisses the thought as it comes. Ten years of guilt, misery, and regrets - it's only natural that his own heavy burdens would be reflected in Della.

“Hello,” he says softly, cautiously, dismissing the nagging feeling that something is different.

“Hi, Scrooge,” says Della, still in that direct, no-nonsense way of hers. She’d rarely called him uncle even when she’d been alive, much preferring to save time and skip several syllables.

For some reason, familiar informality of her address comforts Scrooge, and he does not look away again. “Long time no see, lass.”

Della smiles a broken smile, full of regret and maybe even a hint of self-loathing. It’s a fleeting moment, and before Scrooge can think to much on it, it’s gone, replaced by something simpler, cleaner.

“You met my boys,” she says, and this time, the smile is real.

It’s contagious. Scrooge finds himself laughing, the rush of last evening’s successful adventure bubbling beneath the surface his skin, the absolute madness of having stormed Atlantis with Della’s brilliant boys welling warmly in his chest. “That I did!” he says, shaking his head. “Oh, Della, they’re _fantastic._ Bless me, but I have missed them.” The moment sobers, and Scrooge’s shoulders slump. “I’ve always missed them, I suppose.”

“Course you have." There is no reproach in Della's tone as she moves nearer, the ethereal glow of her feathers casting cool light on the stone balcony. “We’ve all missed so much.”

Just as she’s close enough to touch, Scrooge seems to shrink on himself, curling his knees to his chest and looking away over the grounds. “Della,” he says softly, cursing himself for his senility and sentimentality. “I’m so sorry." Of course, there's no use apologizing to a figment of his imagination, but the words escape him regardless. "I’m sorry for everything.”

And he is. With everything in him, _he is._

When Della does not answer, Scrooge looks up again, and there are tears welling in his eyes. “I’ll do right by them, lass. I swear to you, I will.”

“I know.” Della quirks a sad little half grin at her uncle. “You’re Scrooge McDuck. You’d never do anything less.”

A snort from Scrooge shows her just how he feels about _that_ statement.

A glowing wing falls on his shoulder, and he shudders as she leans into him. It feels like a cold breath of wind shivering down his neck.

“Promise me something?” Della asks. Her voice is small, like it had been as a child.

“Anything.”

“Promise to never forget me?”

Scrooge’s heart stutters and stops. “Forget you?” he chokes when he has his wits again. He whirls around, startled and more than a bit angry.

But Della is gone.

“Ah, lass,” Scrooge slumps back against the moon-bathed walls, suddenly exhausted. He furrows his brow and casts his thoughts to the pile of ducklings sleeping in one twin-sized bed.

“None of us could ever forget you.”

**Author's Note:**

> And there you have it. I have no idea where this came from, but I am so here for dream-walking Della. Scrooge may think he's senile, but I think something's gone wrong on the moon. ;)
> 
> Not sure about Scrooge's canonical age in the reboot, so I made some crap up. Sorry, not sorry. 
> 
> Reviews are love! <3


End file.
